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British actor turned director Richard Ayoade follows up his sublime debut Submarine with the altogether different – but equally as excellent – The Double. His adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1 [ ... ]

Just as he did with the Samurai genre in 1999’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, writer/director Jim Jarmusch now gives us an entirely different perspective on the vampire movie. A sparkling scri [ ... ]

That women exist primarily to support men on their journey through life is an outdated patriarchal impulse that unfortunately continues to inform the majority of modern filmmaking. It is pandered to particularly luridly in The Voices, where all female characters - whether full-bodied object of desire or severed head in a fridge - are there to support protagonist Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) in his quest for self-acceptance.

While Susanne Bier's latest may share similar themes with her previous work, Serena, not least the extreme behaviours born out of desperation and the life-changing nature of parenthood, the two could not be more different in their approach. With Serena, Bier's freedom of expression seemed stifled by an overwritten screenplay and an overwrought romance, not to mention the fact that it was so cloying constructed to showcase its two stellar leads, Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper. A Second Chance, by comparison, is a force of nature, demonstrating an unflinching honesty both of subject matter and style.

Given her remarkable body of work, which takes in the stellar likes of Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Far From Heaven (2002), Children of Men (2006), A Single Man (2009) and Maps to the Stars (2014), it's somewhat unbelievable that Julianne Moore has only been nominated for a total of five Oscars, and has previously always left empty handed. That she should have finally won this year for Still Alice is more than deserved, not just as recognition for that truly exceptional career but also one of her most astonishing performances to date. She is nothing short of perfect here, anchoring an extremely emotional subject - the shattering impact of dementia - with subtlety and grace.

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Nikki's Bio

I have been writing about international film for various print and online publications for well over a decade, since falling in love with film after first catching sight of Gone With the Wind on TV.

While studying cinema at Leicester University, I became the film editor for its student paper. After graduating, I got a job at the UK's longest running movie mag Film Review where I worked my way up from producation assistant to becoming the first female editor in its history. Following Film Review, I joined film industry publication movieScope where, during my five years as editor, I oversaw its evolution from niche magazine to respected international resource. I was nominated for Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors for my work on movieScope.

As a freelance writer, I have written about film and culture for a variety of magazines and websites, including BBC Online, Little White Lies, Filmstar and Kodak's In Camera and The List, and my particular passion is promoting the equal representation of women throughout all aspects of the industry, both in front of and behind the camera. I am a member of various professional bodies, including London Film Critics Circle, Women in Film and TV and Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

I am currently in the process of updating and streamlining Roll Credits.